Ban the book?

[Gurm]

It's idiotic.

I can't stress that eough... it is IDIOTIC.

The idea that children remain innocent to an extreme degree, and then one day when they turn 18 are MAGICALLY adult enough to handle everything that they couldn't handle before... is harmful to everyone involved.

This is directly tied into the ridiculous amount of "christian-coddling" that goes on in this country. The idea is to be as inclusive as possible to all groups, secular or Buddhist or Islamist, but to do so in a way that offends the least number of "crazy christians" (tm Studio 60).

And the entire culture of elementary education is so steeped in it that they've forgotten that they're supposed to TEACH children.

[ZokesPro]

I entirely agree with you Gurm.

[Technoid]

Viewed alone this sounds silly, but in the context of what librarian groups have been doing it makes more sense.

As you may or may not know the vast majority of American parents would prefer at least a modicum of control over their kids exposure to material with sexual/anatomical related terms or content, especially for young children.

Some major Librarian groups seem to have a more than "liberal" attitude in this matter, some insisting that access to even pornography should be essentially unrestricted be it on the 'net or, with some of 'em, in book form. There is also concern that the local 'Chester the molester' will start using trips to the library as one of their techniques. Given some recent cases this concern isn't extreme at all.

This has caused no small degree of consternation among most parents and other librarians. They lobbied their legislatures for laws that would enforce content filtering on library computers accessible to children and the use of parental content permission systems for books. That started a cat-fight that continues to this day, made more interesting by hyperbole by radicals on both sides.

IMO this books author used the term scrotum for two reasons;

1. a stick in the eye to parents/librarians who are concerned about the above

2. an effort to cause exactly this reaction, garnering publicity along the way

Uhm, the idea that an author puts ONE letter into a book to jerk the collective chains of a group of prudes..... hm stated like that it almost seems possible

But I still think that its an overly paranoid state of mind to come to the above conclusions.

[Helevitia]

I entirely agree with you Gurm.

I 2nd this!

[Gurm]

I think that a snakebite on the "nuts", "balls", "nards" or "sack" would be in far cruder and worse taste than "scrotum".

It's funny, because although having 2 small children has mellowed me in some ways, in other ways I'm even MORE of a free speech advocate now than I ever was before.

And more than ever I think that a librarian's job is NOT to censor or pick and choose material based on the local church group's belief system. Hell, the local Christian churches here think that J.K. Rowling inserted "real satanic incantations" into her Harry Potter books. Anyone that's read them who has been to high school recognizes the "incantations" as Rowlings' pitiful attempts to remember her Latin and Greek words. "Ascendo!" "Arresto momentum!" Those are fun. It's even more fun when she mixes Latin and Greek in the same phrase... but let's not digress too much. Point is church groups are f*cking stupid, and so are librarians that kowtow to them.

BUT that's primary education for you. You're lucky if your child learns ANYTHING of any use in grades 1-6 in this country, due to the constant pandering to one group or another. But they'll learn to speak gutter Hispanish, that's for sure!




P.S. "Hispanish", which in this context means the language spoken by anyone who refers to themself as "Hispanic", "Latina", "Latino", etc. and the systematic teaching thereof, is a new term trademarked by Gurm, 2006. For example, over in Europe there's an entire country of people who speak Spanish. But here in America, there's several states (Texas, Florida, etc.) filled with people who speak Hispanish, educated in the gutters of sunny Mexico.